This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round Lower Bracket!

Each game in the lower bracket is still seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools! Every game in the lower bracket has already been defeated by another game in a 1-on-1 poll to get to this point. This is their chance to claw their way back into the main event... but the stakes are high. The games that lose in these polls are out of the tournament for good! The games that survive will face the next crop of upper bracket losers in the next round.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Saturday... or Sunday or Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!

RTK IX was the site of one of my most protracted battles in strategy game history, a decade-long northern front against an absurdly powerful Yuan Shao. I don't mean just hostile relations. I mean units in the field for 10 game years. What an epic game. I probably still have that save file.

RTK IX is by far my most-played strategy game. I bought the PC version with PUK, which adds some cool features such as new officers emerging from regular soldiery in particularly large fights (although IIRC it removes training entirely, which is a mechanic I liked).

It's simple on the face of it, but there's a lot of hidden complexity. Officer combinations, formations, commander personalities, ploys etc - it feels like the ultimate evolution of the strategic level narration of Three Kingdoms (XYZ sent ABC into the field with four generals, ABC issued a challenge to the enemy and came up with a plot...) while abstracting out the economic simulation more. The barbarians make for an interesting mid-game or end-game boss, depending on how you handle them (assuming you don't manage to cheese them with tons of rams and confusion).

One of my favorite memories was sending Zhao Yun out with an army to fend off an incoming enemy army. He tore them apart quickly (as expected), but instead of returning back he decided to grab a nearby fort. I was internally yelling at him, but then he managed to capture it much faster than I thought and it ended up being the perfect forward base for an assault.

The one feature I wish it had is the ability to randomize hidden officer locations. I've memorized most of the good ones...

Dragon's Dogma is a fun game, though. I hate to vote against it, because it's a standout of the PS3/360 gen... but I will.